Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens, you would be surprised to hear, Mr Deputy President, almost had me on their argument. I wish they had given us some notice of it. With respect to Senator Siewert, the hypocrisy of the Greens shows through. They are talking about family friendly and I am a bit attracted to that—not that it is of particular relevance to me personally, but there are other senators who are in that family situation where this would be useful. I would have liked to have had a bit more time to sit down with my calendar, look through that and see what is right or what is wrong. The hypocrisy, of course, comes with the first part of the proposed amendment: that you cannot sit in July. If the purpose of sitting in July is to get rid of the carbon tax then I am totally in favour of that. As soon as we possibly can we have got to discharge the will of the Australian people in getting rid of the carbon tax, so if we could bring that forward to 1 July I would be happy about that. I just find the hypocrisy breathtaking, but it is what you expect from the Greens.

If you were serious about your argument about being family friendly you would have separated the two parts of the amendment perhaps. You would have left out the first bit, done the second bit, and we could argue about that some other day.

Senator Whish-Wilson interjecting—

I hear Senator Whish-Wilson saying you can do that. I am sorry, I am not as quick a thinker as you, Senator Whish-Wilson; I would have to go away and have a look at my calendar and see what is right and what is wrong. But if you are serious about this you would have done it that way. Clearly you are not serious, it is just another opportunity to get up and slag the abolition of the carbon tax.

I have to say I am not terribly happy about the way my government has planned the sittings for this period of this year. I think it was appallingly late in being distributed and it means a lot of people are going to be inconvenienced. It could have been brought forward. I recognise the government could not call the parliament together until Fairfax was determined, but there was still plenty of time to get the parliament back together earlier, so I am unhappy personally with the sitting period this year. I think the point you make on the second part of your amendment, about it not being family friendly, is a very valid one. I am not sure if you approached the government about it.